"Parenting: Part II" columnist Kim Painter is the mom of two teen boys and has written about health & wellness for USA TODAY since 1987.

A TEEN'S VIEW

Casi Lumbra is 18, a freshman at Stanford University and a longtime "Teenangel" educator for the group WiredSafety.

But she still says having an attentive parent helps keep her safe online.

"I'm very conscious of the fact that my mom is following me on Twitter," she says. Though her mom is not a Facebook "friend," her brother is and he sometimes shares Lumbra's photos with their mother.

"I'm a good kid, but if I did do something wrong, I would definitely think twice before putting it on the Internet," she says. "Having a parent there makes it more real."

In high school, "Mom would say, 'I'd like to see the pictures of that fun event you went to,' or 'Can you show me how Twitter works?' She let me show off my stuff rather than just going in and finding it."

When my older son joined Facebook at age 13, the deal was that I'd have his password and would use it to check up on him every few days. Early on, I did catch a few inappropriate posts. Later, I had to remind him to tighten up his privacy settings. But now he's 16 and I'm checking less often. My online kid seems all right.

My sense that it is time to start loosening the digital apron strings is in line with advice from experts in online safety: Just as we take the training wheels off a kid's bike — and someday turn over the car keys — we need, at some point, to trust our children to lead responsible online lives.

But not every 16-year-old is ready to drive a car or to navigate the Internet with minimal supervision.

And it's not as if online dangers disappear after middle school: After all, the latest cyberbullying victim in the news was a college freshman.

"This is a tricky issue," says Liz Perle, editor in chief for Common Sense Media, a non-profit advocacy group based in San Francisco. Parents today have countless tools, including software that can monitor a kid's every online move. "But at some point, you have to install the software in the kid's head," she says.

Parents of older teens often are "too hot or too cold" about online supervision, says Parry Aftab, a New York-area lawyer who runs an organization called WiredSafety.

The "too hot" parents are overly involved voyeurs who read and comment upon every flirtatious text and silly status update. Some kids retaliate by "posting outrageous stuff," Aftab says. "They talk about sex they are not having or drugs they are not doing."

"There's generally a way to get around parents," who often know less about technology than their children, says Maeve Koeltl, a freshman at Temple University in Philadelphia.

But "too cold" parents pay no attention, even when there are signs of trouble. "A light touch is perfect for kids who only need a light touch," Aftab says. But if you know or suspect your child is depressed, using drugs and alcohol, harming him or herself or involved in a risky relationship, you need to see what the child doing online, she says. In some cases, that means using tracking software.

In an ideal world, parents set rules and engage their children in an open, trusting dialog about texting, posting, surfing and searching long before age 16, says Gwenn Schurgin O'Keeffe, a Boston-area pediatrician, blogger and mother of two teen girls. Her new book, CyberSafe, has just been published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"I don't think helicoptering helps," she says. But O'Keeffe says she and her 16-year-old daughter talk frequently about the high-schooler's online life.

Parents who keep the conversation going have the best chance of hearing from their kids when they get an upsetting text or see a worrisome photo on a friend's Facebook page, she says.

And she says parents these days should assume that when a teen is distressed about something, at least part of that something can be found online.

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